Sailing…Takes Me Away

It’s been at least 10 minutes so I was overdue for a new hobby. My latest challenge is sailing classes. A girl friend of mine actually motivated me to take these classes and I’m very thankful to her for that. Usually I feel like I’m the one motivating so this was a nice change. I’ve gone out on catamarans (hobie cat type) with friends over the years and it’s a blast. Mostly I was just the ‘dead weight’ hanging over the side and I left the technical sailing stuff to the captain. So sailing always seemed easy to me. But as the captain I’ve discovered that there is a lot to learn and it will take a long time to master this hobby. I’m ok with that since I enjoy the challenge.

The class consisted of three days in a classroom and three mornings of sailing. I learned a lot including a new language. Ok not really, but everything in the boat has a name. The sail has like ten different names depending on which part you are talking about. Plus once you put a pulley in a boat it is called a block. A rope becomes a line. And don’t even get me started on the parts of the boat.

Our actual on water lessons were a bit stressful. The instructor was obviously a great sailor but not the best teacher IMHO. I can’t even tell you how many times we get ‘yelled’ at. She would ask “what should we do here?” I’d say ……tack? She would get angry so I’d say JIBE! Luckily there were often only two choices – head up or ease off, bow into the wind or stern into the wind, tiller toward the sail or tiller away from the sail. Unfortunately I was only right about 50% of the time which means I’m just an average guesser.

But I did learn some things and I hope to stick with it so I don’t forget. Only problem is trying to fit this hobby in with all the rest. It’s not easy but it will be fun!

Cat ‘Jibe Ho!’ Cathy